Chapter 38: Getting Ready to Head North

Log #38
Getting ready to head north
11:00 am
Saturday, April 29, 2000
On an airplane heading for Phoenix, AZ.

It seems like I’m always on an airplane heading somewhere. Deb, and I are on our way to a conference in Phoenix for a few days, so I thought I’d take some time to update my logs, and give a preview of our northbound plans.

Before I talk about the trip north, let’s get up to date a little bit.

My last log left off with Deb and I in Miami Beach, and I was getting ready to head into a marine store to see what they had. Good news, I found something I needed. Actually what happened was, when we were washing the boat I knocked the scrub brush, and handle in the water, so I needed to replace it. Which I did………plus a few other items I couldn’t live without.

The morning was somewhat cloudy, but you could tell the sun could break through almost any time. I decided to take the bimini top down, so whatever sun there was I could enjoy it on the fly bridge. Getting out of the slip was not quite as much of a challenge as getting in, but almost. Deb, and I took our time untying all the lines, and getting HEADQUARTERS ready to exit, without hurting anyone. As it turned out, we did fine, and were quickly out in the main channel, with all of the huge ships heading to their berths, getting ready to unload their goods in Miami.
In about 3 quick miles we were back on the Intracoastal, and heading north. The sun by now had broken through the clouds, and it was a little cool, but very nice. The only thing noteworthy, as we headed back was a bridge that wouldn’t wait. We were following 3 other northbound boats, and they were about ½ mile ahead of us. The bridge was getting ready to open, so I called the bridge to tell them I’d pick up my pace in order to make this opening, (the next one was 30 minutes later) but just as we got almost up to the bridge, they dropped it. I bitched a little bit, until I thought…….I’m on a boat…….it’s sunny out………I’m in Florida, in the winter……..ok, ok, ok……..this is no big deal.

We had a great trip back to Ft. Lauderdale. When we arrived, we stopped at Pier 66 to top off the fuel ($ 1.26 @ gal.) and Deb picked up our rental car that we left there, while I took the boat, by myself, up the New River, and back to Jackson Marine. By the time I got to the marina, Deb was waiting on the dock to help me tie up. We had plans on where we were going to dock, but someone had just brought their boat in, and took our spot. As it turned out they lived just a few miles from us in Batavia. (They saw our name, and home port on the back of our boat, and instantly became friendly)

We found another spot, washed the boat, and ended the day with a great, very long, dinghy ride on the New River, as we looked at all the huge yachts. Ft. Lauderdale is amazing!

We are just a short time away from getting started on our return trip, and I’m getting excited. I have ordered all of the charts we will need to get us home. There are three different types. First I need Cruising Guides, for all the areas, to tell me about places to go, and information on the marinas. Next I need paper charts of all of the waters we will be in. I will then read the cruising guides, as I follow the charts, and use a highlighter to plot our course on them. This is makes it easy to see where you need to go, and saves me a lot of time as we travel. (I also love doing this, and I spend many hours dreaming about “being there”. Actually, the planning piece is one of my favorite parts about this kind of a trip.) The other thing I need is electronic charts. These are little chips that have the charts burned into them, and I can load them in my Chart plotter, which interfaces with my GPS, and I can see where I am at all times. The problem is these are expensive, and a luxury on this type of trip, so I’m trying to figure out which ones I need, and which ones I would like to have. No matter which ones I order, the cost of the charts is very costly. I hope I can find a way to sell these charts after we are home, because they will be useless to me.

Anyway……….a number of you have asked about how many legs we have left, and what our plans are, so I thought I’d give you a recap of what is coming up. (Remember, if you want to catch up on what has happened so far, and where we came from………log on to
www.greatcircle.homepage.com, and you will see all of the previous captain’s logs.)

Our plans from here are.

Thursday, May 11th Deb and I head to Ft. Lauderdale to get on the boat at Jackson Marine, and take it to Pier 66. From this point Deb will be on the boat for 5 weeks.

Friday, May 12th Darrell, and Donna Thompson (boating friends of ours, who were on the boat during the first leg) will fly into Ft. Lauderdale in the afternoon, and meet us at Pier 66, and travel with us the first week.

Saturday, May 13th. The official day we begin out trip north!

Saturday, May 20th we should be somewhere around Charleston, SC. Darrell, and Donna will get off, and head home, and Steve and Chris Thoke (my partner in business, and his wife… who got married on the boat last January) will get on board.

Saturday, May 27th by now we should be in Norfolk, VA. (1,065 miles from Ft. Lauderdale) Steve and Chris, will head home. For the next two weeks I will go to work in our Richmond VA. Facility, and Deb will stay on the boat. It is only about an hour drive from Norfolk to our facility, so I will drive it to work each day, and come back to the boat at night. We have already found the marina we will stay in here (we did this on one of our trips to Richmond earlier) and it’s right downtown, so Deb can explore Norfolk during the day. We also plan to have a few of the management team on the boat over the weekend that we are docked there.

Thursday, June 8th Rome and Theresa Hubert fly into Richmond. (They’re our neighbors, who became friends while we were living in Bourbonnais IL. from 1988 to 1996)

Friday, June 9th we continue our journey, and head out from Norfolk, into the Chesapeake Bay. We need to hustle in order to get to ST. Michaels Maryland, by Saturday night, in order to meet one of our customers, and entertain him and his wife on the boat on Sunday.


Monday, June 12th Barb Cunningham (Deb’s Mom) will fly into Baltimore, to join us on our way up to New York City.

Tuesday, June 13th We’ll leave Baltimore, to finish our trip up the Chesapeake, through the C&D canal, into the Delaware Bay, and to Cape May at the very southern tip of New Jersey. From there we’ll head out into the Atlantic, and up to Atlantic City. From Atlantic City it’s a little over 100 miles, all outside in the ocean, up to New York City.

Saturday, June 17th We should arrive in New York City

Sunday, June 18th we head home, and I go back to work for 2 weeks.

Saturday, July 1st we fly back to the boat in New York City. We will be joined by Steve, and Claudia Larry. (Steve is one of our VP’s at Pro Source) We will also be joined by Gary, and Joan Hedge. (I used to work with Gary at my previous company) They will be with us for the next week.

Sunday July 2nd. We will leave New York Harbor, and head up the Hudson River to Troy NY. At Troy we will turn due west, as we join the beginning of the Eire Canal. We will follow the Eire Canal west to the Oswego Canal, and then head north to Lake Ontario.

Saturday, July 8th by now we should be at the southeast corner of Lake Ontario, in Oswego NY. We will all head home, and I will go back to work for 2 more weeks.

Friday, July 21st We will fly back to the boat, joined by Terry and Jeanie Ruhland (Jeannie is Deb’s sister) This will be our final leg which will take us across Lake Ontario, into Canada. We will then navigate through the Trent-Severn waterway, through the Georgian Bay, and on the very north side of Lake Huron. At that point we will join Lake Michigan, near Mackinaw Island. We will then come down the east side of Lake Michigan, and head across to Chicago at, or about Michigan City. From there it’s all river as we leave Chicago, and join the Kankakee River, and then finally the Illinois River, about 50 miles from our marina.

Saturday, August 5th we should arrive Starved Rock Marina. Our starting point.

So that’s it. We have a long way to go, and a lot of things to see along the way. Hopefully things will go smooth, and we will only have great memories to look back on.
I’ll keep you posted along the way.

BK.